I’m never gonna stop saying this: #NeverStopLearning. And a big part of learning is knowing (and accepting) that you don’t know everything. In fact, more likely than not, you know nothing, or next to it. This is why feedback is so important – it fills in gaps in your knowledge.
And this is especially true in any creative endeavor, like voice work. As artists, we’re prone to falling in love with our own work, or in our case, the sounds of our own voices. So we often find ourselves repeating patterns and forming bad habits. Worse, we don’t notice when this happens.
This also happens even when we criticize, even hate our own work. We nitpick and focus on the things that annoy us, and fail to recognize what’s good about it. And sometimes, we end up giving up completely on things that could’ve been pretty damn good, if only we had stuck to them.
So go out and get as much feedback as you can from others. And get them from a bunch of people, not just the ones in the circles you frequent.
Find groups focused on your craft, and listen to each other’s work. Critique freely, but more importantly, accept criticism openly.
But be careful as well, because if you rely completely on peers, you’re never really sure where you’re leading each other. And if you don’t know where you’re going, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.
So reach out further and seek out people in the industry that you admire. Take their classes or workshops. Solicit their opinions, and if you want to take it further, ask if they’re willing to mentor you.
The caveat here is that nobody is infallible. Nobody has a monopoly on information. Nobody is the absolute best mentor for everybody.
Some people have more experience in specific genres than others. Some are generalists who can discuss various aspects of the craft. And sometimes, you simply connect better with certain people, and because of that, you learn more quickly when they teach you.
So, my point here is to go out and get feedback from different people. Take it all in, filter out what doesn’t work for you, absorb it, apply it, then repeat. And as long as you are always open to feedback, you will #NeverStopLearning.
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